Feminism Catch-All (with FAQ)

GoldieBlox are interesting from a marketing perspective, as an exercise in spotting the gap in the market and filling it, but I can't resolve my internal dichotomy between "yay for not gendering types of toys" i.e. blocks are for boys, dolls are for girls, and "boo for totally gendering the sh*t out of this particular toy".

IMAGE(https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/283701/photo-main.jpg?1351643927)

A quick Google image search shows that the product is very heavily gendered in it's design and it's marketing. I can't fault the makers for doing so - it seems self evident that in order to compete in the US toy market, you have to gender the sh*t out of your product, but they seem to be talking out of both sides of their mouths. The "About" page of their website had a big title that says

"Disrupting the pink aisle."

I look from that to pictures of the product, and I'm seeing very little in the way of disruption of stock-gender aethetics or gender-normalizing. It's all princess this and pink that.

So, all of that said, with a girl currently finishing baking in this engineer's wife's belly, I'll no doubt be all up in this shiznit come Christmas 2020.

1. Pink it up to get foot in the door
2. Succeed, build empire
3. Do what you really want

At least, that's my hope. To subvert the norm you sometimes need to embrace, address, and then destroy it.

If nothing else, it's at least playing with it is not just passive tending of things, which to me is the real problem with the "pink aisle."

Jonman wrote:

"Disrupting the pink aisle."

This part bothered me the most. Probably because I had an interview a couple years ago where the VP said some variant of "disrupt" 13 times in a one-minute description of the company.

The No-Makeup Myth

IMAGE(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1470802/thumbs/n-SIERRAMCKENZIE1119-large570.jpg?6)

Most people think the picture on the right doesn't have makeup. In fact, I find that when most guys say they prefer a girl who doesn't wear makeup, they really mean they want the girl in the right picture.

sometimesdee wrote:

The No-Makeup Myth

IMAGE(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1470802/thumbs/n-SIERRAMCKENZIE1119-large570.jpg?6)

Most people think the picture on the right doesn't have makeup. In fact, I find that when most guys say they prefer a girl who doesn't wear makeup, they really mean they want the girl in the right picture.

Yes, but I put this in the same bin as guys who wear facial hair to cover up imperfections. While she is applying makeup, she is doing it to cover blemishes more than she is to change the colors of her face.

Nevin73 wrote:

she is doing it to cover blemishes more than she is to change the colors of her face.

I don't see a functional difference between those two.

sometimesdee wrote:

The No-Makeup Myth

IMAGE(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1470802/thumbs/n-SIERRAMCKENZIE1119-large570.jpg?6)

Most people think the picture on the right doesn't have makeup. In fact, I find that when most guys say they prefer a girl who doesn't wear makeup, they really mean they want the girl in the right picture.

It's more evident in person. I actually prefer the girl in the left picture. The girl in the right pic is what I would expect for pictorials and stuff. Of course, everyone wears makeup for those, even me.

That's because you don't have a whole industry and society telling you that if you don't step out of the house like the girl on the right you're horribly wrong.

What she did there was a heck of a lot more than letting hair grow to cover a scar. And there's a huge pressure on her to do it every single minute of every single day. There is a multi-billion dollar industry making money on capitalizing and maintaining this.

When your friend growing the beard has to spend hundreds of dollars a month to keep it up, carry around a bag of stuff with him to keep it up, with magazines and media in all directions making him aware of it every minute, then talk to me about how there's no functional difference.

edit: Sorry - I was talking to Seth and the guys above, and Larry and I cross-posted.

momgamer wrote:

That's because you don't have a whole industry and society telling you that if you don't step out of the house like the girl on the right you're horribly wrong.

What she did there was a heck of a lot more than letting hair grow to cover a scar. And there's a huge pressure on her to do it every single minute of every single day. There is a multi-billion dollar industry making money on capitalizing and maintaining this.

When your friend growing the beard has to spend hundreds of dollars a month to keep it up, carry around a bag of stuff with him to keep it up, with magazines and media in all directions making him aware of it every minute, then talk to me about how there's no functional difference.

edit: Sorry - I was talking to Seth and the guys above, and Larry and I cross-posted.

My apologies, I may not have been clear enough -- I was trying to say that wearing makeup to cover blemishes is the same as wearing makeup to "change colors of the face," and that institutions have gotten so successful at requiring women to do it that men are utterly ignorant when it happens -- hence the cognitive dissonance. When men say "I like women with no makeup" they really mean the girl on the right.

In other words I'm 100% on board with everything you said, momgamer.

Yeah, I'm sorry - what you guys said comes off as completely the opposite of that.

Part of the difference might also be that you don't understand what is required to go from the left to the right there.

She didn't just smear on some foundation to cover the blotches to make that change. Both her eyebrows have gone through some major work. She's also done some work on her lips - she's wearing a sheer colored gloss of some kind. She's also wearing eye makeup - mascara and primer at least.

(Though for professional pride's sake I do have to point out the right picture is Photoshopped at least in part. That's another giant can of worms, though.)

I prefer the picture of the girl on the right, but I'm pretty damn sure that I would prefer the girl on the left as a partner.

Okay I've been staring at the photo for 3 solid minutes. How on earth can you tell it's shopped?

Seth wrote:

Okay I've been staring at the photo for 3 solid minutes. How on earth can you tell it's shopped?

Definitely the pixels.

You have to zoom in and use some tools. If you look around her ears there are phantom hairs clipped out on both sides. There's a disturbance in the background gradient you can see. Also note the little hairs around the edge of her bun and drifting around are in EXACTLY the same position - even those ghost hairs. Just the movement of air in the room would have changed it. There is no way they blended foundation all the way up into her hairline like that without shifting the individual hairs at her hairline AT ALL - that little widow's peak at least would be shifted a bit, but it's identical to the pixel.

And the position is too perfectly matched. If she'd taken the one pic and then gone and done makeup and taken the second pic there would be very subtle differences in her stance. Even the same muscles in her shoulder and neck are tightened. Her ears are lined up the same, to the pixel level. And her pupils and the reflections in her eyes are also aligned to the pixel.

My guess would be is they cleaned up the background at the very least. Then if they did use actual makeup to make her up they pasted the made-up section of face into the middle so as not to do it twice and then went in an blended the two together. It's really easy to do. I'd have to have an original to be absolutely certain. Making the picture web-ready blends a lot of stuff together and cuts down on the amount of information you have to work with.

I do need to point out I'm not in any way invalidating the base premise of the comparison picture. The way you literally never see any woman ever go out without the benefit of Ms. Clairol in her hair, Max Factor on her nose (and in the case of print they add our friends at Adobe) has become so pervasive people think that is how women actually look is a real problem. This is part and parcel of the issues we've talked about before with body image. If you're standing there in the morning at the mirror and your reflection looks like the gal on the left, but everyone and everything around you looks like the girl on the right, it's a huge pressure.

And it's not all in your head. People treat you differently, in ways that seriously impact your professional and private lives. Here's a study - http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...

.....wow. I am in awe of that analysis.

This video is sad because it's true. Absurd thought it was a real cosmetics ad and tuned it out the first time I played it for him.

I used to spend my days fixing the weather and cleaning up blood and wounds on the prey for fishing and hunting guides. That pic of a guy holding up a fresh-caught halibut works much better on your brochure and website when it's not streaked with gore and raining sideways.

But that's all mostly stuff there for anyone to see, though.

Edit: Just saw your post, Dee. Exactly.

momgamer wrote:

I used to spend my days fixing the weather and cleaning up blood and wounds on the prey for fishing and hunting guides. That pic of a guy holding up a fresh-caught halibut works much better on your brochure and website when it's not streaked with gore and raining sideways.

But that's all mostly stuff there for anyone to see, though.

Edit: Just saw your post, Dee. Exactly. ;)

Or as Jonman said: she can tell from the pixels, having seen quite a few shops in her time.

Stengah wrote:
momgamer wrote:

I used to spend my days fixing the weather and cleaning up blood and wounds on the prey for fishing and hunting guides. That pic of a guy holding up a fresh-caught halibut works much better on your brochure and website when it's not streaked with gore and raining sideways.

But that's all mostly stuff there for anyone to see, though.

Edit: Just saw your post, Dee. Exactly. ;)

Or as Jonman said: she can tell from the pixels, having seen quite a few shops in her time.

Yeah, but I can tell you precisely which pixels.

Jonman wrote:

I prefer the picture of the girl on the right, but I'm pretty damn sure that I would prefer the girl on the left as a partner.

Why? How does whether or not someone wears makeup determine what kind of partner they are?

Eva Earlong wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I prefer the picture of the girl on the right, but I'm pretty damn sure that I would prefer the girl on the left as a partner.

Why? How does whether or not someone wears makeup determine what kind of partner they are?

Perhaps it's the assumption that makeup = high maintenance? OTOH, there's also the assumption that a woman who wears makeup cares more about her appearance, and therefore takes better care of herself.

Eva Earlong wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I prefer the picture of the girl on the right, but I'm pretty damn sure that I would prefer the girl on the left as a partner.

Why? How does whether or not someone wears makeup determine what kind of partner they are?

Think there's a slight mis-reading in what I meant there - while I readily agree the made-up/photoshopped version of the woman upthread looks "better" (and by "better", I mean "more closely aligned with Western cultural norms of female attractiveness"), I'm much more romantically attracted to people who own their divergence from those cultural norms.

Which is to say, whether or not someone wears makeup is one factor which influences my attraction to them. To be blunt "ugly-without-makeup" is hotter than "pretty-with-makeup". Totes a personal thing, and one that likely puts me in a minority, but there it is.

Self-acceptance is very much more attractive to me than adherence to cultural norms. I tend to be far more attracted to women in jeans and a T-shirt and no make-up than women in heels, a dress and full-on Friday-night-war-paint. I remember when I first met my wife - her "here is me as I am, if you don't like some of it, that's your problem, not mine" attitude was *really* alluring.

And I totally will 'fess that in my brain, there's a linkage between "self-acceptance" and "eschews makeup", which is no doubt false in a million cases.

Rightly or wrongly, I've come to associate wearing make up with having issues. This is undoubtedly from a previous relationship where the girl was fastidious with her appearance, but also came with a buttload of issues. I've gotten so averse to it that I suspect people of wearing it even when they're not. This is unfair, of course, but that's my damage. I try to modulate it.

Interesting piece in Slate about women and the Marine Infantry Training Course.

One reason why so few women apply is that they’re denied the incentive given to men: Even if the female candidates pass, the Marines won’t let them earn an infantry specialty. The broader level of interest among women has surprised Marine officials. In a survey last year, 34 percent of female Marines said they’d volunteer to serve in a ground combat unit. At Parris Island, 51 percent said they’d consider infantry training.

What’s keeping women out of the infantry altogether isn’t the weakness of women. It’s the weakness of men. In last year’s survey, 17 percent of male Marines said they’d probably leave if women were allowed in combat jobs. Commanders are afraid to lose those men. The few, the proud, the insecure.

The few, the proud, the insecure.

I had a lot of friends from my high school and people I met shortly after go into various armed forces. A couple got into the Marines, and it's interesting how their experiences kind of back this up. I was told by three separate friends (who didn't know each other) how surprising it was that so many people went into the armed forces really just to prove their manhood. The notion of country and service seemed to come a distant, DISTANT second to that.

Bloo Driver wrote:
The few, the proud, the insecure.

I had a lot of friends from my high school and people I met shortly after go into various armed forces. A couple got into the Marines, and it's interesting how their experiences kind of back this up. I was told by three separate friends (who didn't know each other) how surprising it was that so many people went into the armed forces really just to prove their manhood. The notion of country and service seemed to come a distant, DISTANT second to that.

well if women are going into the marines to prove their manhood, whatever shall we gentlemen do?? [/faint]

I have no problem with women being better men than men are. Of course, my wife is the breadwinner in our household. I do the girly things like looking after our baby, kitchen work, laundry etc. etc. It's never really bothered me, and I have no objection to women serving in the armed forced in whatever capacity they choose - individual capability allowing, just like with men. Not all men are capable of lugging around a machine gun and tons of equipment while running at a decent clip, any more than all men are snipers.

Anyway, interesting article that deals with 'gender norms' a little:
Why I wear Nail Polish.

Rallick wrote:

Anyway, interesting article that deals with 'gender norms' a little:
Why I wear Nail Polish.

What kind of small town is that girl from that she'd never yet seen a goth, punk, or art student?

Three women finally pass enlisted SOI (which is a breeze), meanwhile the transition to females having to do a measly 3-8 pullups is put on hold due to women being unable to perform. When men and women are taking the same PFT and CFT, then you'll be able to have women in the infantry without the men jumping ship.